Dead Again, Daniel
by Sally Mn
Summary: But not quite the same as always...


_**Dead Again, Daniel**_

Doctor Daniel Jackson shifted slightly in what might once have been discomfort, and bit his lip.

All the way through.

O'Neill winced. This was going to be a lot harder than Carter had hopefully, hopelessly hoped. "Would it help if they said they were sorry, Daniel?"

The bright, glaucous eyes turned on him; the question he could see in their fathomless depths was also forming - rather sluggishly - on the discoloured lips. Blue and grey still looked good on Daniel, he couldn't help thinking... though not as good as when it wasn't Daniel's _skin_...

He cut in quickly. "Very, very sorry. Never seen them so sorry." He glared at the two Tok'ra who were not being the slightest help in this crisis, but who he thought could at least try to look less superior and more sorry. "Never seen them sorry at all, and we're sorry too, but it was -"

"Colonel." That was Hammond, still in command, still trying to guide the most surreal briefing they'd had for... oh, at least three weeks, wasn't it? And as always trying to stop Jack from saying something they'd all regret in front of the alien VIPs. He never succeeded, but Jack had to give him points for trying.

Daniel kept staring at him with that dark, vacant gaze. It gave him the creeps... hell, it gave them all the creeps. Even the TweedleTok'ra One and Two were visibly creeped. which, under Jack's own creeped-out unease, gave him a nasty little glow of schadenfr... whatever Daniel had called it. _He_ called it getting even.

But he wouldn't have ever wanted to get even like this.

"The sarcophagus, Daniel," Carter wittered, strung half-way between horror and helpfulness. "It was the sarcophagus. When you were... well..."

"Killed." Obviously TweedleTok'ra One hadn't been creeped enough to keep her mouth shut.

"Again." And neither had Jack, it seemed, despite Hammond's previous rebuke.

"How...?" Crap, even getting - _that_ - again didn't cure Daniel's curiosity.

"The panel of Goa'uld writing above the sarcophagus that you were assisting the Tok'ra to decipher," Teal'c took a hand, his voice as rigidly calm as it ever got. O'Neill wouldn't have called it deciphering as much as making the usual mad passionate academic love to, but had a feeling Hammond wouldn't appreciate yet another smart-ass crack.

Pity. It kept the sick coldness - and the creeps - at bay.

Teal'c was still speaking, anyway. "I regret to say... it was fixed less well than we thought."

"It... umm... fell on you," Carter added shakily.

"It killed you." TweedleTok'ra Two finished, totally unnecessarily. "It was therefore necessary to use the sarcophagus to revive you."

"We didn't realise - we didn't know, and you were dead -" The major blundered on. "- and it was all we had to bring you back to life. Well, try and save you. Try and save what we could of -"

"Yes..." A tiny, familiar, ghastly frown wrinkled the colourless forehead. "Buuut... the... smmmaller panelll... Teeeaaalk..."

Teal'c scowled, though rather less sepulchrally. "I saw no panel."

The frown deepened, and the bluish lips thinned in what might have been concentration, but looked horribly like the rictus grin of a zombie. Of course - by all appearances _and_ from what their unhelpful alien allies said - Daniel was pretty much a zombie at the minute. Undead.

Which, O'Neill thought, beat being _dead_ dead.

Maybe.

Again, crap.

This was going down every bit as hideously as he'd expected. Daniel dying was not exactly news any more - it still hurt like hell, of course, but the simple fact was that it had proven to be too, well, _short-lived_ a state for it to have the same sickening impact time after time. Daniel _always_ ended up undead again...

He flinched at the thought.

"It wassss... Goa'uld," Daniel went on, his voice as cold and hollow as the door closing on an alien tomb. "A variant... of Goa'ulllld, rather... quite interrresting, like a piiiidgin... form."

"Pidgin snake?" That earned Jack a pained look from everyone at the table... except Daniel, who nodded slowly and awkwardly.

"Sigggnnifican'... differennce to any...thing we... wee've seeeeen sooo...." The harsh whisper faded - after a breathless (for everyone, not just the undead Doctor Jackson) pause, it went on croakily. "I tthhhhought... thoughtttt it musssst... be deriiived from... an olderrrr dialeeccctt ttthat..."

"Daniel -"

"Thhhere werrre inndica... signnns of pprimittive Goa'ulllld on ssome of the... arrrtifacs frromm.... PPPP...EECCKSSS...DEEEE..."

"DANIEL!" For cryin' out loud, he doesn't change even when he's - Jack stomped on that thought, and spoke carefully. "Never mind where from. What did this panel say?"

Daniel blinked slowly, crustily, then bent his head, grasping a pen in stiff fingers and sketching on the paper in front of him raggedly. In yet another breathless - or at least soundless - silence, he handed the paper to Teal'c, who looked at it and - shocking everyone even more than they were already shocked - also blinked.

"Saaaid..." Daniel indicated with a one rigid, pointed finger.

Teal'c gazed at it for a moment, then slowly read it out - or started to. At the first sonorous honk and screech, both Sam and Jack clapped hands over their ears, Hammond jumped, and even the Tok'ra looked startled - or at least like, Jack thought, rather less like someone had farted than normal.

Daniel nodded slowly, and equally slowly brushed away a fragment of shedding skin.

"Ppiiiidgin Goa'uld," he said again.

"But what does it mean?" Hammond asked patiently.

"What...? Oh..." Daniel gave an odd, twisting motion that yesterday would have been a shrug. "It's a... sign."

"Sign of what, Doctor Jackson?" TweedleTok'ra Two pressed. "Invasion plans? Occupation and resistance? Weapons? What?"

Daniel stared at him, which - as it meant he wasn't staring at Jack - was a relief.

"Nooooo... just... a siiiign."

But that wasn't. "Daniel."

"Jaaahck?" Ouch. That was oddly... creepy.

"Daniel...?"

"A... sign." Daniel lifted a heavy-looking hand, pointed at the paper. "It... mmmmmeans... 'Out offf Orrrder'."

Sam gulped.

Jack groaned.

Both Tok'ra opened their mouths to say something, found nothing to say... and closed them.

Hammond took a deep breath. "Ahhh... thank you, Doctor Jackson. A pity no one realised..."

"The fact is, Doctor Jackson," TweedleTok'ra One said with portentous - and exasperating - gravity, "your knowledge and skills are still needed if your world is to survive, so letting you die was not an option."

"And tttttthis... issss...?"

"We are working on a solution. We have contacted our allies -"

"And ours," O'Neill still couldn't help snarking, and Hammond did not seem inclined to stop him. But snarking was not gonna help Daniel, so he took a deep breath, turned his chair - and Daniel's - so they faced each other - and looked into the sunken, empty blue eyes. "Daniel, we're really really sorry. _They're_ -" with a glare at the Tweedles, who did try this time to look sorry, "- really really sorry. And we're gonna get help and get it all fixed and get you back to normal a-s-a-p. Trust us." Jack didn't like the blank way his undead friend was looking at him, and hurried on. "But while we're waiting..."

His undead friend kept staring.

"Umm... tell him, Carter."

She glared.

"Teal'c?"

He stared back silently.

"Umm, General?"

Hammond shook his head, but obviously knew a buck landing squarely on him when he heard it. "We do need you, Doctor Jackson. "The truth is, we always need you, but at this moment the fate of millions - and our allies - may be in your hands." He very carefully did not look at those hands, sere and discoloured and slightly curved, like claws. "You understand, son, the war against the Goa'uld will not wait, even for something like..." his own voice faded, and for the first time ever, he seems lost for words.

TweedleTok'ra One obviously decided to take another hand. "Your unfortunate demise."

"Partial demise." TweedleTok'ra One may have been trying to help, but from the glares sent her way from around the table, she might have realised her mistake. In any case, she shut up.

"Someone will be able to fix it," Carter leaned across and cautiously yet lovingly touched one sere, lifeless hand. "We'll do everything we can, Daniel: pay, plead, bargain, argue... anything. _Someone_ must know how to fix it. They have to."

Daniel's head tilted slightly, stiffly, as he stared. "Yea...sureyoub...etcha," he whispered in a dull, sepulchral thread of sound.

"Trust us," she even managed pat, if gingerly, at the cadaverous skin. "But in the meantime -"

"In the meantime -" Hammond repeated, nodding slowly and as commandingly as anyone could to a zombie archaeologist he had to ask for help from.

"Indeed -" Teal'c and the Tok'ra Tweedles spoke together, glowered at each other, then all looked benignly on the zombie archaeologist.

"Daniel?" Carter glared at them all, then tried her own earnest, big-blue-eyed gaze on the zombie archaeologist... and almost pulled it off, O'Neill had to grant her that.

They then all looked straight at him. Even the zombie archaeologist.

Again... crap.

Jack sighed. "Daniel, it's like this. Carter's right, we'll get it fixed. Soon. Very soon.

"But while we're waiting for someone, anyone, to come and - unzombie you - they will, you know they will and we'll make damn sure they will - but d'you think you could fill a bit of the waiting time... and save the world for us? Again?

"Please?"

**-the end-**


End file.
